It’s Christmas Eve! Things here at my apartment are getting quite exciting. My pet unicorn and I have trimmed the tree, wrapped presents for our friends and family, sent out our Christmas cards, and baked cookies for Santa. I love the smell of fresh pine and Christmas cookies!! It’s magic.

Christmas Eve is always a special time for my pet unicorn as she gets to see Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Yep, my pet unicorn and Rudolph are cousins. So, even though I must go to bed after leaving out milk and cookies for Santa, my unicorn stays up and waits to have a minute catching up with her cousin. Every year she makes him and Santa’s other reindeer magical “Reindeer Food”. You see, being a unicorn, she is able to apply specific colors to her recipe. Each color she uses has a different nutritional benefit for Santa’s reindeer.

Well Christmas is just around the corner! Lets just say the excitement is definitely building. This year, since New York rent is so high, my pet unicorn and I have decided to make gifts for our friends and family. There are a few ideas that we been kicking around, but this week we made “Candle Tattoos”.

You may be wondering what inspired this particular craft. Well, in the beginning of the year I got a tattoo. (A real one.) My pet unicorn isn’t allowed to get a tattoo because unicorns have an intolerance to the ink that is used. I felt bad… I know how much she has wanted to get a cupcake tattooed on her neck. So we came up with a fun way for her to create and play with tattoos at our apartment. While playing with our tattoos one afternoon and sticking them on non-conventional things… the “Candle Tattoo” was born.

Last week I bought a new pair of white shoes. It seems that the instant a new pair of white shoes hit your feet, they are doomed to become scuffed or stained. Well, I decided to wear my new white shoes to run a quick errand with my pet unicorn to her parents house in the Cotton Candy Kingdom, and of course I stepped into a mud puddle. I am sure you are thinking “Oh no! Not in your white shoes! They must have been ruined!” and normally I would have to agree with you. But….we were in the Cotton Candy Kingdom… and that means Rainbow mud puddles. I must say, they actually look better than before. After all, colors ARE magic.

Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are tall with wings, or are neon yellow with feathers and fangs. Some are tiny enough to fit comfortably in a thimble or as large as whale! There is a type of monster however, who has been overlooked.. and they need a just little TLC. Doh Monsters.

Much like a hermit crab who will out grow it’s shell and search for a new home, Doh Monsters are born like little lumps of clay and must find a protective jar to dwell in. Because they are indeed monsters… and I want to feel like it, they tend to look for jars that are decorated like monsters on the outside. They also enjoy some good playtime amongst human children and will come out of their jars to play. You see, Doh-Monsters are wonderful at shapeshifting and love to see children using their imaginations. But, if you are going to ever play with a Doh Monster just remember, they will need to go back into the jar home when you are done playing. If they stay out for too long they could turn to stone. No one wants that. It’s just sad.

My poor pet unicorn has been up the past few nights with awful dreams. I feel so bad for her… but she is too big to fit in my bed, so there is not much that I can do. I decided to call her mother and ask what is the best to way help unicorns with nightmares. She told me that there is a very soothing Magic Milk Potion that mommy and daddy unicorns give to their little ones when they get scared at night. It is made from cutting a piece out a rainbow and boiling in a pot with a cup of sugar and milk for 10 minutes. She told she it was ok if I didn’t have access to organic rainbow chunks and gave me a substitute recipe.

The Magic Milk Potion ended up being really fun to play with and totally memorizing. If you have a little unicorn who is suffering from nightmares… or it is a rainy day and you need to entertain your kiddos– it is a great recipe to have on file. Your kids will be sure to have tons of fun playing with rainbows in their bowl.

Once, while taking my pet unicorn to visit her family in the Cotton Candy Kingdom, I noticed something very wonderful. Outside of each house in the unicorn neighborhood were all sorts of gorgeous flowers…. some were so bright that I thought wearing a pair of sunnies may be a wise decision. I do have human eyes after all. Of all the beautiful flowers there, one type caught my eye. The roses. They were not just your average run of the mill roses…. their edges were beautiful colors. They were not like the flowers who’s colors were so bright that they glowed. They were not 10 feet tall or blowing glitter in the wind. They were just….. lovely. I asked my unicorn if there was a way to find a packet of seeds in the Cotton Candy Kingdom so that I may be able to plant some of these beauties in New York. She told me that these actually were just regular white roses that she brought for her mother from New York for “Unicorn Mothers Day”. She said that fairies had come into the garden at night and kissed the edges of each petal. Fairy kisses are magic. When they kiss something it leaves behind a sort of rainbow airbrush effect on wherever the kiss lands.

The nanny scene in LA is a machine of it’s own and highly competitive. You would have thought that I had moved to Hollywood to become an actress. I even had an agent. Yes… there are such a thing as “Nanny Agents” and yes I could probably write another post entitled “#NannyAgents”. I had some of the most bizarre interviews that you could imagine and did “trial periods” with a few different families–all of which I properly left after finding out how crazy they were crazy. Legit crazy. “Yes… it does make me very uncomfortable that you would like to debrief about your child’s day completely naked. Put some clothes on.” That kind of crazy. After a lot of trial and error, I did find a fit. Not everyone in LA is crazy.

I have been a nanny in some pretty cool places. Alaska, Australia, LA & Hollywood, and New York. Yes… nannying in New York can be as picturesque as you may imagine it. Going to have picnics in Central Park is lovely. Taking little girls to high tea at Alice’s Tea Cup is perfect. (I will write a post about the things that I love as a New York Nanny soon.) However, it can also inspire a list of #NannyProblems. More specifically… #NewYorkNannyProblems. Some days… the struggle is real.

I know that I have a very active imagination… but seriously, every time I walk into this place I feel like I have jumped straight onto the page of a storybook. Not only does it have 3 large rooms full of children’s books (the selection is amazing), but it is staffed with the most wonderful and knowledgeable people ever. Two staff members in particular really made all of my many visits a great experience. Eryca and Kevin always greeted me and the children I nanny warmly and remembered our names. I think the kids felt kind of like rockstars when we were there. All the special help picking out books on what they were interested in, playing with toys, and having conversations about Adventure Time… and other very important issues. The 2 year old especially loved being there. I am pretty I personally doubled my children’s book collection over the 2 years we spent hanging out at Children’s Book World.

I am a sucker for lemonade stands. Why wouldn’t I be? Adorable kids… selling adorable beverages….. with the occasional adorable cupcake or cookie. It’s just all adorable. Giving them a dollar makes them light up like you told them they were going on a family vacation to Disneyland. (Oh man, I am so “homesick” for Disneyland right now.)

Well, last Friday after going to Trader Joe’s to do the world’s largest and totally overdue grocery shop, I stumbled upon this little treasure. Meet, Sophia.